This column is, in part, about lightweight rowing; and I appreciate that subject may mean a lot more to me than you given that, in order to compete, I once struggled down to 70kg on a diet of Ryvita for a year while being driven quietly mad by the smell of forbidden fry-ups and doner kebabs.
A heck of a lot of training and not much food, and definitely no booze, does not sound like a great time — I’m still a little torn as to whether it was worth it — but it certainly gave me an appreciation for those who excel in a strict discipline that tests body and soul to the limits of endurance.
Lightweight rowing (crew average 70kg for men, 57kg for women) also brings a level playing field — or, rather, a perfectly flat lake — given everyone weighs the same. Given that most of the world is not 6ft 4in and built like a brick outhouse, you would think that it has an important role in making the sport more exciting, accessible and relatable.
And you would be right and, therefore, perhaps amazed to discover that the IOC, in its wisdom, thinks that it is a waste of space. The Olympic governing body voted to throw the discipline out of the Games, with far-reaching consequences.
So this is actually a column about the Olympic movement and how casually, how imperiously it tosses a sport aside in pursuit of, well, what exactly? To make room for a new cricket event — Twenty20 in the Olympics — in a sport that already has a crazily cluttered calendar and needs a new competition like Ben Stokes needs another wear-and-tear injury?
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For the geo-political serving of India’s desire to host the 2036 Olympic Games in Ahmedabad, the home city of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, even though, of course, the last place where cricket needs selling is in India?
Is it about sport or patronage, like giving NBC, in return for many billions of dollars in TV rights, golf and tennis stars at the Games even though everyone knows those competitions are pale imitations?
Of course, public appetites matter and rowing does not sell itself well on television. Viewers have little comprehension that under the composed focus of a metronomic rower are depths of physical torture and mental agony. But if a sugar-rush of TV entertainment were all that mattered we would be taking an axe to many Olympic sports.
And the irony is that the lightweights have much more potential for nail-biting races because everyone is a similar size. The women’s double in Tokyo had five crews within a second of each other, and a photo finish to find the winner.
The spotlight of the Olympics is rare, precious exposure for rowing — which makes the decision to abandon the lightweight events even harder to fathom.
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The IOC has said that it does not want weight categories aside from combat sports, martial arts or weightlifting, though does not seem bothered to explain why. According to one source, it does not like that you could have four men in a heavyweight boat then, soon after, four smaller men. Even if that is the explanation, the events could simply be split between weight classes.
Nor does it like the size of rowing squads, which makes you wonder why it has embraced so many team sports including rugby sevens, cricket, lacrosse, baseball, softball and, a new arrival, flag football as a present to the US.
Critical to understand is that this is an IOC decision, which rowing initially opposed, having had to fight to bring in lightweights in the first place in 1996 to promote the sport across different continents and for a wider variety of body types.
Until 2016, Fisa, the international rowing body, could decide the Olympic categories. Then the IOC said it would have the final decision which it deploys with all the fickleness of an emperor’s thumb.
“I feel sorry for my sport because it’s not in their control,” Mark Hunter, Olympic gold and silver medallist in the lightweight double scull at Beijing 2008 and London 2012 respectively, says. “It is something the IOC have put in place. The disappointment of that is wondering, ‘Does the IOC know what is going on in sports?’ ” It is a fair question.
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Has it thought through how this cascades down the sport? UK Sport funding for British Rowing is predicated on Olympic medals — win them, or else — so with no lightweight events there is no point in supporting elite lightweight rowers. That part of the team will be disbanded after Paris 2024; no GB boats at all to send to World Championships or any other competition.
What impact does that have down the sport among hundreds of boat clubs? What message does it send? “Where does it leave the sport? That’s my worry,” Hunter adds.
It is a particularly pertinent question when the rowing event in Los Angeles 2028 has been switched, for logistical reasons, from a 2,000m lake to one that can only accommodate a 1,500m course even though every other race in the calendar, including Olympic qualification, will be over the regular distance. “Try asking the best sprinters to run 70m instead of 100m in an Olympic final and see the reaction,” one senior rowing figure said.
World Rowing had battled against these changes but, realising it was in a losing fight, changed tack. It pushed for a new event of beach sprints for LA in which a crew member runs to a boat which rows out through waves, turns and then rows back to shore.
The talk is of beach culture, youth and fan entertainment and, perhaps, it will prove a successful innovation. There are many countries in the world that do not have access to a traditional 2,000m body of water but to sea.
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Yet it remains to be seen if the established powers simply switch resources to target medals in a different discipline — and whether beach sprints will prove a gimmick that the IOC can easily dispense with.
Inevitably, Hunter wants to defend his sport, and especially the category in which he so proudly and successfully competed for Team GB. “It will affect the sport massively,” he says.
But, rightly, his concerns are beyond lightweight rowing to the way that the Olympics is governed. “If Thomas Bach steps down [as IOC president], what does the next person think? We see this with politics, a new political wind blows and the trouble is that those actually in the sport can’t influence what they do. They have a power of their own.”
I am well aware there is not likely to be a populist uprising over rowing, a sport that already has to battle the air of elitism. And, yes, the ancient Olympics has always adapted. Sports come and go. But we are right to ask why, especially of a body as compromised as the IOC, and whether it is for the better.
